We have original science fiction by Stephen S. Power (“Fade to Red: Three Interviews About Sebold’s Mars Trilogy”) and Mary Anne Mohanraj (“Plea”), along with SF reprints by Karen Joy Fowler (“Game Night at the Fox and Goose”) and Fran Wilde (“A Moment of Gravity, Circumscribed”). Plus, we have original fantasy by Jeremiah Tolbert (“The Cavern of the Screaming Eyes”) and Kat Howard (“The Key to St. Medusa’s”), and fantasy reprints by Aliette de Bodard (“The Dragon’s Tears”) and Will Kaufman (“October’s Son”). All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns. For our ebook readers, we also have an ebook-exclusive reprint of the novella “The Stars Do Not Lie,” by Jay Lake, and an excerpt from Will McIntosh’s new novel, Faller.

Science Fiction

Alison called all over the city trying to find a restaurant that served blowfish, but there wasn’t one. She settled for Chinese. She would court an MSG attack. And if none came, then she’d been craving red bean sauce anyway. On the way to the restaurant, Alison chose not to wear her seat belt.

Fantasy

“Is that the collapsible, carbon fiber ten-foot pole from TrunchCo—” I slammed my locker door and spun the combo lock, but it was too late; the fanboy already seen my gear. I didn’t know what his interest was, but I didn’t want to encourage him. I said nothing. He continued: “I’ve got the one from a couple of years ago that folds up. It sucks.”

Author Spotlight

My feminist interests have moved since the days of writing that story from the binary, the story of men and women, into something more complicated and more accurately reflective of the many gender and sexual possibilities and histories. But I do think, with the Clinton campaign fully underway, we are already seeing a return to that simple old-fashioned misogyny.

Author Spotlight

A large inspiration for the story was the comic book Scott Pilgrim. I’d been wanting to try something similar, taking video game elements and projecting them onto the real world, but perhaps with tabletop RPG elements as well. As kids, we often talked about how great it would be if we could transport ourselves into a fantasy world to be our characters. It only took me thirty-plus years to get around to writing a story about what that might be like.

Science Fiction

I’ll be the first to admit that my homemade rover didn’t do the original justice and my color treatment was a better reflection of my Hollywood thinking than of the Martian landscape. What appealed to JPL was how I captured the tension of driving the rover across Gale, where every pebble can put years of training to the test. They were also impressed that I left my Curiosity outside Hanksville, Utah, not far from the Mars Desert Research Station, then controlled it and its cameras from a van several miles away. And they were amazed that my route for approaching the Mars Light almost perfectly mirrored their own.

Author Spotlight

Someone had to be the interviewer, so I figured, why not me? I love cameos, such as Vonnegut walking into his novels or, more prominently, Rob Reiner directing and playing the director in Spinal Tap. It certainly made things less complicated. I’m glad you didn’t notice story-me, though, because an interviewer should be invisible, like the never-named reporter in Citizen Kane.

Fantasy

Huan Ho sealed the last window, leaving only a crack in the shutter. Tonight, he thought, his eye on the empty streets, the neighbours’ barred shutters. Tonight he had to pass the door on the hill, or let the sickness take his mother. She had been watching him from her bed. “They ride tonight,” she said, when he was done.

Author Spotlight

To me, hope isn’t so much a talisman against sorrow as its dual expression—it’s what gets us through sorrow, but also what sharpens it and makes it almost unbearable, very much a double-edged sword. The idea of opposite things giving meaning to each other is definitely something I try to explore in my work. My novel The House of Shattered Wings is about finding beauty and hope (but also sorrow) in the ruins of a Paris devastated by a magical war.

Nonfiction

The real world may seem increasingly dystopian lately, but that doesn’t seem to have quenched our thirst for dystopian visions. Two current shows—one that reaches into the cinematic past, the other straight into the modern zeitgeist—are leveraging the science fictional furniture of dystopia to powerful, if decidedly different, effect.

Science Fiction

Djonn’s father owned the last ticker in the city and made sure everyone knew it. Brass-bodied, the ticker looked fragile and cold, its clouded glass face obscuring the dark symbols beneath. Despite its age, it ticked loud and regular, breaking the arc of a day into increments. “You have thirty ticks to decide,” Djonn’s father said when he made a deal.

Author Spotlight

The world captured in “A Moment of Gravity, Circumscribed” is a complex hierarchy, evocatively built on a city of living bone high above the clouds; what an image! There’s a lot of family secrets and deceptions, what drove you to tell us about such young protagonists with such gothic themes? You’ve written several novels set […]

Fantasy

My parents knew I was a witch before I was born. The signs were there, they told me. They were unmistakable. Well. Not all of the signs, or they never would have kept me as long as they did. But enough: My mother’s hair, previously sedate and well-mannered, turned curly and wild during her pregnancy, sometimes even grabbing forks from other people’s hands at meals.

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Author Spotlight

This story in particular came about because of the different ways the word “witch” gets thrown around. In some cases, it’s a specific word used to describe a woman with magic—a woman with power. In others, it’s used as a pejorative term, used to describe a woman who isn’t liked. Who doesn’t behave as people think she should. So I wanted to play with the idea of being a witch as being a status crime.

Science Fiction

Three families ahead of them in line. Many more behind, stretching along the beach; it had taken most of the day to get this far, and Eris’s sun was now setting, casting red-gold rays across the sand. Gwen resisted the urge to remind Jon to stand up straight. Their hosts—potential hosts—couldn’t stand up at all, and there was no reason cetaceans would even notice a human’s posture, much less care.

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Fantasy

When my wife began to swell, I wondered what seed infected her womb, my own having long proved fruitless. As she grew, her cravings turned to dirt and water and long spells naked in the yard under the bare trees and what sun pierced the clouds, and I asked her, Who have you loved? Who have you fucked? Why is your belly growing round?

Author Spotlight

The seed of this story actually came from watching my young son navigate kindergarten. Anand was having a really difficult time for much of the year; his instinctive response to frustration was often to lash out, and while he rarely actually hurt anyone (he’s quite small), that kind of behavior is obviously challenging in a public classroom setting.

Author Spotlight

Short stories don’t give the writer a lot of time to work a wedge into the reader’s brain so you can split it open and fiddle around inside. A solid visceral image is a very fast, effective way to do that. Reading is often portrayed as an intellectual activity, but it can also be very bodily. Nothing reminds people of that, or grounds them in their bodies and short-wires the defenses that separate mind from body, quite like a little body horror.

Nonfiction

Allen Steele is the author of such novels as Orbital Decay, V.S. Day, and Ocean Space, as well as the eight-volume Coyote series about colonizing a habitable moon in the 47 Ursae Majoris system. His short story collections include Rude Astronauts, The Last Science Fiction Writer, and Sex and Violence in Zero G. He’s also a highly regarded expert on space travel who has testified before the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics.